Jeff is still fighting to compile a new splitter. Several roadblocks appeared when converting the old but working solaris code to linux (endian issues, for one). Meanwhile I was able to squeeze out a few more drops yesterday from our current set of solaris splitters. I niced them way down (giving them CPU priority), and even retrofitted kang to make it able to run a splitter as well. Kang is a rather useless (due to lack of memory/CPU) Sun Netra that we keep kickin' around for no good reason, really, except with some effort I was able to tease out a few cycles. All these efforts combined allowed us to finally get a work queue growing again, but just barely. We'll see if we stay above water over the weekend.

I appreciate people wondering what the heck "kang" was, being as it was never made public before. Honestly, it's fun to hide some of the facts at first to see what kind of speculation takes place first. And yes, there used to be a "kodos" but it died long ago.

A lot of my time today was spent putting some effort to tying users to the workunits they analyzed in the science database - a problem we've been putting off for too long. Seems simple but it isn't - one major obstacle being the BOINC backend having no clue about where the scientific results end up after assimilation. It doesn't have to know and it doesn't want to know. Likewise there is no user information in the science database because, well, there's no scientific reason for it. Anyway, it's up to the specific project to decide how they want to handle user acknowledgement as the result products are so varied. Another obstacle is that while this is a rather simple database, it is fully historic, meaning it's going to be big and requiring constant updates. Do we have the resources for such a thing?

So Jeff, Eric, and I decided on a third database which will be accessible by SETI@home web servers with ease and will be inserted with values during that brief moment during validation when one single process happens to have a user id and science database workunit id at hand at the same time. There's also a huge, growing stack of db_purge flat file archives (in XML format) on a RAID system which currently is the *only* copy of user-to-workunit information. I just wrote a script to parse those and plop them into the new database. The validator part is tricky - it requires I ramp myself up on validator code which will be a painful but ultimately good exercise. All told, when this is done there will be a button on your user page which will give you historic information about BOINC work you have processed for us. Maybe some fun graphics, too. One step at a time, though..

- Matt

---

-- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person
-- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude

Thank You Matt (also to the crew @ Berkeley . . .) Keep up the good work mates

---

BOINC Wiki . . .

Science Status Page . . .

....
<snip>
....

when this is done there will be a button on your user page which will give you historic information about BOINC work you have processed for us. Maybe some fun graphics, too. One step at a time, though..

- Matt

WOW! ... that will be Great! ...thanks very much ... Matt , Jeff , and Eric!

Best Wishes
Byron

I appreciate people wondering what the heck "kang" was, being as it was never made public before. Honestly, it's fun to hide some of the facts at first to see what kind of speculation takes place first. And yes, there used to be a "kodos" but it died long ago.

Hmm... so let's see if I can stir this subject a little bit :)

Kang - Klingon Commander, who once helped Capt Kirk defeat an alien presence on the Enterprise, had an incident with Capt Sulu near the Klingon border, and was friend to Curzon Dax.

Kodos - Former governor of Tarsus IV (?), accused of murdering thousands (?) of people on that colony. AKA Kodos the Executioner. Like his namesake, he's also dead.

Live Long and Prosper,
Wander

---

I appreciate people wondering what the heck "kang" was, being as it was never made public before. Honestly, it's fun to hide some of the facts at first to see what kind of speculation takes place first. And yes, there used to be a "kodos" but it died long ago.

Hmm... so let's see if I can stir this subject a little bit :)

Kang - Klingon Commander, who once helped Capt Kirk defeat an alien presence on the Enterprise, had an incident with Capt Sulu near the Klingon border, and was friend to Curzon Dax.

Kodos - Former governor of Tarsus IV (?), accused of murdering thousands (?) of people on that colony. AKA Kodos the Executioner. Like his namesake, he's also dead.

Live Long and Prosper,
Wander

Actually, in this case, I suspect that Kang & Kodos refer to the two recurring aliens on The Simpsons.

---

I appreciate people wondering what the heck "kang" was, being as it was never made public before. Honestly, it's fun to hide some of the facts at first to see what kind of speculation takes place first. And yes, there used to be a "kodos" but it died long ago.

Hmm... so let's see if I can stir this subject a little bit :)

Kang - Klingon Commander, who once helped Capt Kirk defeat an alien presence on the Enterprise, had an incident with Capt Sulu near the Klingon border, and was friend to Curzon Dax.

Kodos - Former governor of Tarsus IV (?), accused of murdering thousands (?) of people on that colony. AKA Kodos the Executioner. Like his namesake, he's also dead.

Live Long and Prosper,
Wander

Actually, in this case, I suspect that Kang & Kodos refer to the two recurring aliens on The Simpsons.

Right :) but if I'm not mistaken there was a Marvel character that also go by the name of Kang... I think is the Kang the Conqueror or something like that.

Regards,
Wander

---

Kang, Kosh, & Kudos are likely Visiting Aliens masquerding as old UC Students or Associate Professors while keeping an eye(s)on the progress of Seti... They probably watch old version of the original Star Trek and have a good rousing laugh whenever Kirk says "Take her out Sulu... Over there..."

Ian the Wonderful ( 1.0 Million Seti WU Processor )

Hold on... if we really want to know which user found the "wow signal" you could look up the workunit ID in the BOINC database. All the users who crunched that workunit would come up in the SQL Query.

Why spend 40+ hours of work adding a new database that will require at least 40+ hours of maintenance over the next year? Users are also going to ask for the ability to use the db, which means more bandwidth usage. Requested, tweaks and modifications to polish the interface will also eat up your valuable time.

Sorry for my rant, but as a fellow DB professional... this seems like wasted time. I vote you spend the time on giving scientists more access to the science database so they can do research on the data.

---

Overclock with the MSI G31M3-L and Intel E8600 3.33Ghz
Intel D865GLC Socket 478 Motherboard
~How To Overclock The Eee ASUS 1005HA Netbook To 1.9Ghz~

Hold on... if we really want to know which user found the "wow signal" you could look up the workunit ID in the BOINC database. All the users who crunched that workunit would come up in the SQL Query.

Uhm, a small problem here... After a wu is Assimilated and all results is accounted for (either reported and tried validated or past deadline), wu/result-info is archieved to file and afterwards deleted from BOINC-database...

Meaning, neither Science-database nor BOINC-database contains info of who crunched a particular wu.

---

"I make so many mistakes. But then just think of all the mistakes I don't make, although I might."

Hold on... if we really want to know which user found the "wow signal" you could look up the workunit ID in the BOINC database. All the users who crunched that workunit would come up in the SQL Query.

.... because once the work unit transitions, it is no longer in the BOINC database.

---

Hmmmm, wouldn't the host ID for the canonical result at least make to the MSD?

That was what I assumed the reason for the new DB was, so the WU partners wouldn't be lost.

Alinator